Black Girls Gamers Exist: Safe Spaces for Black Girl Gamers

I wish these weren’t questions I received on a regular basis, but sadly, they are. And these are questions that I receive from all types of people, including Black men!

Similar to other industries, in the gaming world, Black girl gamers often get overlooked and cast into the some of the deepest and darkest dungeons of the gaming community. So I’m making it my personal goal to shine the biggest and brightest light I can find on all of my fellow Black girl gamers. I’m talking end-of-Kingdom Hearts 2 “Door to Light” levels of brightness. I want the whole world to see us and know that we do, in fact, exist. And I also want them to know that we can play any game we want to, and sometimes, better than your faves!

NBA 2K.Call of Duty. Final Fantasy. The Sims. Overwatch.

You name it, Black girl gamers are playing it, and they are playing it well, or not so well, and that’s fine too! A quick visit over to Twitch or YouTube will confirm this to be a fact, and a quick Google search will also disprove some of your preconceived notions about Black girl gamers. There are plenty of communities out there for Black girl gamers, and I’m going to talk about a couple of them in this article.

The first community I’d like to talk about is Black Girl Gamers, the platform on which I am currently writing this article. Black Girl Gamers was started by Jay-Ann Lopez in an effort to create a safe space for Black girls who loved video games. Often feeling left out in the gaming community, a community she loved very much, Lopez created Black Girl Gamers to connect with more gamers who looked like her and could understand where she was coming from.

The Internet is full of trolls, and Black girl gamers are no stranger to this fact. Not only are we thrown sexist slurs, but we’re also thrown racist ones as well. So we’re stuck in a constant limbo as we try to navigate the gaming community as a double (sometimes more!) minority.

Video game companies are changing and trying to make their markets more “diverse,” but that is also something that Lopez in wary of, as she fears a lot of them are only out for the money. And she isn’t wrong.

With a community like Black Girl Gamers, Black girls can feel safe and unexploited. They can be sure that they are constantly amongst friends and feel comfortable and connected while participating in one of their favorite hobbies. Black Girl Gamers is makes gaming feel good!

Another community that understands the plight of the Black girl gamer is The Cookout. The Cookout was created in an effort to provide a safe space for gamers of color, LGBTQIA+ gamers, and gamers with disabilities. The creators of The Cookout saw the gross amount of underrepresentation in the gaming world for these groups of gamers and decided to create a space where they could congregate and share their love of gaming.

And not only does The Cookout game together, but members also gather in real life for meet-ups in other arenas as well, including eating out and going to the movies. They attend events together, including TwitchCon and very soon, Universal FanCon. They share kitchen creations with one another, help each other set up streams, record podcasts, and everything else one would do with members of their family, because at this point, that’s exactly what they are!

The Cookout is an awesome resource available to not only Black girl gamers, but all minority gamers! If you’re feeling lost and alone on your gaming journey, definitely give The Cookout a visit. I promise you will enjoy your stay!

The last community for Black girl gamers on my list is Black Gamers Revolution. Branding itself “as Black as gaming gets,” Black Gamers Revolution got its humble start on Tumblr. Once again, its creators wanted to create a space where Black gamers could get together and be able to relate to each other in the context of gaming.

Black Gamers Revolution often hosts community nights, featuring different games for its members to play, and they also host a number of other events to keep Black gamers connected in a world where it can sometimes be very hard us to feel welcome. Black Gamers Revolution are doing an awesome job of connecting Black gamers and helping them build a community in which they can feel safe and have fun. Check them out when you get the chance!

Although it’s still hard to be a Black girl gamer in our current gaming world, communities like the ones mentioned above are making it a lot easier to cope with this fact. All of these groups have Discords that you can join if you’re interested in meeting other gamers that look like you and making friends that will last you a lifetime. So go ahead and check them out when you get a chance. You deserve to play video games in a comfortable environment, and you deserve to have good people in your life!

Black girls deserve the world, and these communities are making sure that we get it!